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By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
RAMADI, Iraq — In this violent city where more Marines have died than anywhere else in Iraq, one was thought to be blessed with good fortune.
On April 6, Lance Cpl. Deshon Otey, 24, of Hardin, Ky., was the sole survivor of an attack on his Humvee that killed seven of his comrades in Echo Company. His only wounds were nightmares, Otey said later. "I always see these guys with turbans. They come up and just start slaughtering all of us," he said. A few weeks ago, Otey and three other Marines manning a sniper post died in circumstances that cruelly mirrored his dream. The Iraqi insurgency has never been more deadly than when it fought Marines in this city April 6. That fighting, all but overlooked in the swirl of violent events that month, may have been the most harrowing street combat since 1993, when U.S. soldiers were nearly overrun and 19 were killed in fighting that stunned America and led to the Clinton administration pulling forces out of Somalia. In Ramadi, the Marines killed scores of fighters and prevailed. But a dozen Marines were killed and 25 wounded. At four different locations on April 6, Marines were ambushed in coordinated guerrilla attacks that showed a precision and skill never before seen in Iraq. (Related story: The most dangerous city in Iraq) After learning so many of his fellow Marines had died, "I was in a state of denial," says Cpl. Travis Friedrichsen, 21, of Denison, Iowa. "I kept saying, 'What do you mean they're gone?' Because I had never heard of that many people getting lost in just one day." Unlike fighting in April in Fallujah, 30 miles to the east, and in cities in southern Iraq where U.S. Marines and soldiers battled resistance fighters, the Marines were on the defensive in Ramadi. "They had some moxie," says Capt. Kelly Royer, 36, of Orangeville, Calif., commander of Echo Company, which lost 10 men that day, including eight in one ambush. "They hit us in the far west, in the north of our AO (area of operation) and in the far southeast. ... Where did this organization come from? Were they always here? Did they come from outside Ramadi?" The Marines learned later that in setting up the ambush that left eight Marines dead, insurgents warned away local residents that morning by telling them, "Today we are going to kill Americans." In a letter to Marine families in April, the commander of the 1,000-man 2nd Battalion of the 4th Marine Regiment, Lt. Col. Paul Kennedy, said fighting in Ramadi was the hardest "this battalion faced in over 30 years. Within the blink of an eye, the situation went from relatively calm to a raging storm." Golf Company The battle began at midmorning when Marine patrols fanned out across Ramadi to provide security, meet and greet people and search for roadside bombs. Three squads of Golf Company's 3rd Platoon set off on separate routes. They worked their way west from a base called Combat Outpost, headed to the government center, 2 miles away, where they would link up and stand guard. Platoon Staff Sgt. Damien Rodriguez, 27, of Menifee, Calif., led a squad of 12 men. They moved on foot into the densely packed neighborhoods on the south side of town. That's when insurgents ambushed another squad northwest of their position. Rodriguez and his men came under fire as they raced through the streets to flank the attackers. "All hell broke loose," he recalls. "They were all over these roofs shooting down." Marines took up positions and began returning fire as Rodriguez led others into nearby buildings to clear out insurgents. Rebels manning machine guns began to fire from down the street. "There's probably about 45 guys that hit us," Rodriguez says. "But after that, it just seemed like everybody in the neighborhood who had an AK-47, which almost all do, was shooting out their windows." As the Marines radioed for assistance, they could see small groups of insurgents armed with AK-47s or rocket-propelled-grenade launchers moving to flank them. Ambulances and taxis dropped off rebel reinforcements and picked up dead or wounded. Three Marines peeled off to attack fighters down the street. One of them, 6-foot-5 Pfc. Deryk Hallal, 24, of Indianapolis was struck in the right thigh by a bullet. Rodriguez sent two more Marines and a Navy corpsman to assist. That's when things began to fall apart. "We started to lose the initiative," Rodriguez says. As Marines began to carry the wounded Hallal into an alleyway, a bullet struck him in the back of the head. They could do little more than administer morphine and say a prayer as Hallal died in the street. They had been fighting for 90 minutes. Another half hour would pass before a relief force fought through the streets to reach them. "We just kept throwing more Marines into the fight and just kept pushing and pushing and pushing," says Capt. Christopher Bronzi, 30, of Poughquag, N.Y., Golf Company Commander. Pfc. Moises "Moy" Langhorst, 19, of Moose Lake, Minn., also was killed in the battle. He was found dead around a street corner, his weapon gone. Echo Company The sound of battle reached a four-man Marine sniper team from Echo Company more than a mile away where they lay in tall grass near the Euphrates River. Sgt. Romeo Santiago, 26, of Phoenix was joking about how bored they were watching for anyone trying to plant bombs. Suddenly, 14 Iraqis armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled-grenade launchers began moving toward them. The militants were in a straight-line formation. The four snipers, their backs to the river, had never seen anything like it. "I told them (on the radio) we got beaucoup bad guys coming toward us," Santiago recalls. A mile downriver, along the same road, 1st Lt. Vincent Valdes, 31, of Pasadena, Calif., and two squads of Marines were waiting for explosives experts to dispose of three mortar rounds they had found buried in the road. When word arrived of the attack on Santiago's sniper team, Valdes took a squad of 10 Marines in the squad's only Humvee and barreled down the road to the rescue. They drove into a firefight. Valdes' men poured out of the Humvee. With the Marine snipers, they charged across the road driving back the insurgents. Machine guns in nearby houses opened up, followed by mortar fire. Pfc. Benjamin Carman, 20, of Jefferson, Iowa, lay dying from a shoulder wound. Cpl. Marcus Cherry, 18, of Imperial Calif., engaged to be married on Nov. 20, was struck in the face and killed instantly. "They were biding their time," Valdes says of the rebels. "Waiting for the right time to strike." The 10-man squad Valdes had left behind was now under attack. Eight were driven into a house. Insurgents lobbed hand grenades on the roof. One explosion took out Lance Cpl. Roy Thomas' left eye. The 21-year-old from Mount Pleasant, Miss., took a digital camera from his pocket and handed it to Lance Cpl. Chris MacIntosh, 22, of Scituate, Mass. Thomas asked MacIntosh to take a picture as a souvenir. "He looks at it and says, 'Holy (expletive)', " MacIntosh recalls. Relief was still hours away. As if on a signal, insurgents on rooftops and others at a T-intersection ahead began to fire. Marines down the road could see Pfc. Ryan Jerabek, 18, of Oneida, Wis., firing the Humvee's machine gun. Struck several times, he literally went down fighting. Otey jumped out of the Humvee and sprinted to the next nearest vehicle full of Marines. "I'm running as fast as I could," he recalled later. Bullets whizzing by him somehow missed. All the others in his vehicle and another Marine farther back in the column died. The insurgents had sealed off the ambush site. The group Otey reached remained pin down in a building for hours, unable to move before rescue arrived. Otey said, "We never felt so much fear and anger at one time." Marines killed an estimated 250 rebels on April 6, 7 and 10 in fighting that eventually shattered the enemy offensive. But Marines are still being threatened by snipers, rockets and roadside bombs. Otey was killed six weeks later. Another veteran of the fight, Sgt. Kenneth Conde, 23, of Orlando died in a roadside bomb blast last week. Combat in Ramadi goes on. |
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